


Point of No Return

by mytimehaspassed



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Knifeplay, M/M, Multi, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 04:30:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20203762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: Hickey says, his voice soft somewhere on the inside of Tozer’s thighs, “Does your ship need a doxy?”It had been different, before.





	Point of No Return

There’s a biting, breathless smile, the dimples rising on his cheeks like wounds, and then his fingers are on Tozer’s trousers and he’s sinking down, down, to his knees in the dirt and the dust of the unkempt wooden floor, the bow of his mouth ravenous on the skin of Tozer’s belly. Tozer’s fingers go to his hair, ginger, soft, catching the light from the hallway, the outline of the door like a golden egress, and there’s high-pitched laughter downstairs – some fucking punter with a bit of skirt, Hickey says, his mouth full – and Tozer’s nails scrape hard enough on Hickey’s scalp that Hickey sucks in air through his teeth. Tozer shivers and shivers, and Hickey’s tongue is on fire, and it’s Tozer telling him things he shouldn’t, not Hickey, words that start with _please_ and _don’t stop_ and end with _love_. 

There had been a time when it wasn’t this, when Hickey had only been a sharp tongue and a bit of warmth, clean-looking enough to draw Tozer here, to this lodging house, where he spent his morals at the same time he spent his coin. Hickey had serviced other men before him, but Tozer scratches and bites and beats this out of him, so now Hickey’s wicked smiles are only for him, Hickey looking up at him from his knees, the bend of his neck delicate in the lamplight. 

He pays more than he did in the beginning, for Hickey and for the release of his burdens and for Hickey to lay with him afterwards, the bruises and welts and the blood on Hickey’s lips, his chin, as Hickey paints kisses on Tozer’s chest, as Tozer licks it from his mouth. He tells him about the expedition, about the Passage and the ship and the ice, tells him this while he watches Hickey slip on Tozer’s own slops, too tall, too wide, pushing up the sleeves and tucking his hair behind his ears and burning Tozer’s skin with the trail of his beard, down and down and down again. 

Hickey says, his voice soft somewhere on the inside of Tozer’s thighs, “Does your ship need a doxy?”

It had been different, before. 

***

The scars are thin and white, and when he pulls Tozer’s hand to rest just there, Tozer’s thumb on the swell of his hip, Tozer doesn’t ask what they’re from, who gave them, knows the streets where Hickey came from just like he knows his own. “Did it hurt?” he asks instead, a question that has Hickey laughing quietly into the crook of Tozer’s neck, his breath coating the underside of his chin, crawling across his chest. 

“Better question is,” Hickey says, his lips and teeth and tongue, his hands and fingers and nails, Tozer’s skin pink beneath him, beneath all of him, “did I like it?”

Tozer hums low in his throat, a warning, and Hickey lifts the corner of his mouth into a half-eaten smile. 

It doesn’t pain Hickey when Tozer touches the scars. 

He touches them, anyway. 

***

Hickey keeps his knife slid in between his stocking and boot, though every time he finds Tozer in his rooms, he is bereft of clothing, merciless when he takes himself in his own hand and teases Tozer from the settee, calling him Mary Anne, urging him to come closer for a bit of fun, watching Tozer’s fists clutching at the length of his uniform, unable, unwilling to touch. Hickey had needed a knife a few times in this room, before and after Tozer, when a punter had tried to take what Hickey wasn’t willing to give. He doesn’t tell Tozer this, when he uses the knife on him, the blade smooth on Tozer’s palms, on the bottoms of his feet, up and over and around, tracing lines into the meat of his post-end, stripes to match Hickey’s. 

Tozer bleeds, and Hickey bleeds with him, and it’s hours before Hickey tastes something other than metal in his mouth, Tozer’s spend at the back of his throat, Hickey swallowing and swallowing and swallowing. The cuts are shallow and quick, but they bleed like the devil, and the sheets are soaked through – something Hickey will have to boil later, once Tozer has left him and the girls from downstairs have fallen asleep in pairs, in threes, skirts riding up their thighs, smelling collectively of powder and whiskey and a good fuck, Hickey with his hands in the wash basin, red as a fucking lobster – and Tozer and Hickey lay entangled in them now, the blood drying on their skin, rust-colored and flaking off like ash. Tozer places a kiss on the column of Hickey’s throat and Hickey preens like a peacock, stretching, his muscles jumping beneath his skin, his body flayed open. 

Tozer had brought tobacco, and Hickey pinches some now, rolls it in paper with deft fingers. Tozer strikes a match and brings it up to Hickey’s mouth, and there’s a line there that elongates his smile, the cut of his dimple, a line that Tozer had carved with purpose, pulling and itching every time Hickey moves his lips. Hickey takes a deep inhale, the smoke wafting up and up and up, and then hands it to Tozer, who only holds it for one moment, two, before giving it back to Hickey, untouched. 

There’s a bruise on Tozer’s ribs in the shape of a hand. Hickey places his own palm there; it doesn’t fit. 

***

He dreams of sand and snow and sea, dreams of a shapeless monster that growls and bares claws, dreams of Tozer in his uniform standing tall and proud on the deck of a ship, dreams of faceless, nameless men, gangrenous and severed limbs, bleeding, blackened gums, the howl of an ice storm and his own name bitten out of their mouths. 

Tozer sleeps beside him as he always does, fever warm, and Hickey fits his dull teeth over his shoulder and wonders what the meat would taste like, how it would feel to carry a piece of Tozer inside him. 

***

There was a punter, before Tozer, who liked to watch him and William of next door. He paid, like all the rest, but never touched either of them, even when Hickey would look over shyly, a flutter to his lashes, faint blush to his cheeks and nose, Billy’s fingers here and there and here again, Hickey moaning shamelessly, absurdly loud. He tells Tozer of this and others like it, just to watch the flash of his eyes, the jealous set of his jaw, his fingers twisting and turning in the front of Hickey’s shirt, possessive. 

He had dabbed him, Hickey soothes after a while, kissing the side of Tozer’s mouth. Sixteen punches to the lungs with his own goddam boat knife, Billy breathless beside him, his fingers rising slowly to shroud his mouth. Simple, quick, and Billy had turned away when Hickey had carved his initials – his real initials – into the punter’s chest, heaving himself dry later in the privy, bile that had run like water, like tears. And Hickey had pressed a cool hand to Billy’s temple, his fingers crawling into Billy’s curls, and Billy had asked him what the punter’s last words were, not able to hear through the rush of blood that had risen in him like a tide, and Hickey had smiled deeply, sharply, and leaned close to tell him. 

Tozer asks for the punter’s name, when Hickey is nice and pliant, begging for Tozer to touch him, to taste him, begging for release. Hickey laughs, and spends, slick skin against slick skin as he slides off Tozer’s lap and to the cupboard and the mess of officer’s uniforms that have collected there. He finds the coat, slides it on, and Tozer bites his lip to hide a smile. 

“Lieutenant, eh?” he says, and Hickey pokes a finger through one of the knife holes, and the buttons flash bright and clean underneath the light of the lamps. He slips onto Tozer’s lap once more, wraps the coat around both of them, and it smells like blood inside, smells like money and promise and death, and Tozer fingers the stitched letters on the cuff and breathes in deeply. 

“He would sing psalms to us,” Hickey murmurs from where he rests his head on Tozer’s shoulder. “Billy would have me in his mouth, or I would have him from behind, and the punter would tell us where to go next: _kiss his belly, his yard, fingers inside there_,” Hickey smoothing out his accent for this, and Tozer feels the scratch of the wool biting into him, feels Hickey soft and small. “But mostly, he’d sing to us, his hands quivering on the good book hard enough that the pages rustled. It was a right laugh for Billy and me.”

Tozer says nothing, but his grip tightens and tightens. 

“It was alright, until the end.” Hickey leans up, the smile snaking across his face, and Tozer can feel himself start to rise. 

“What happened?”

Hickey shrugged. “He asked for Billy alone.” His fingers are cold on Tozer, cold enough to burn. 

***

Tozer has his orders, sailing off the week after next into the cold. 

He regales Hickey with stories he’s heard of the Sandwich Islands, Oahu, Maui, the geography that rolls off his tongue and into Hickey’s kiss, their fingers scrabbling for purchase on sweat-slicked backs. They don’t talk about missing each other, too close to Mary Anne sensibilities for comfort, but the language is in their touch, anyway, the way that Hickey pulls Tozer close, his nails sharp on Tozer’s shoulder, on his thighs. Hickey pants long, labored breaths into the crook of Tozer’s neck, and Tozer returns it in kind, shifting Hickey against him, hefting him up and down and up and down, blood and spit and semen. 

Hickey dreams of humidity, of sunbaked skin and blue water and Tozer there with him, sandy palms brushing roughly over his naked chest. “There are islands for each man,” Tozer whispers when the lamp has been blown out, when the sounds of downstairs have ceased, the punters off to their homes, the doxies asleep in their beds, Hickey wrapped around Tozer as if he’s afraid of letting him go. “We can have our own,” he says, and it hangs there between them for one moment, two.

Hickey’s mouth trembles. “I would need papers,” he says, and closes his eyes when Tozer leans forward, eats away the sound of his voice. 

It’s later, when Tozer has almost drifted off, that Hickey laughs softly, slowly, against him. “Hmm?” Tozer murmurs, high in his throat, his eyes open, his eyes closed. 

Hickey kisses him, the cut of his mouth pulling and pulling. “I already have the coat.”

***

The man Tozer brings him is fair, beardless. 

He goes down with one dab, makes no sound when Tozer wraps a large palm around his mouth to steal his breath, pressing down hard enough that his jaw cracks. His uniform fits well enough, Hickey pulling it on over his naked skin, and the papers inside are clean, unbloodied, and Tozer strips him only moments later, when it gets to be too much, burying his mouth into the space where Hickey’s shoulder meets his throat, drawing blood with his teeth. It’s as painless as it usually is, Hickey having forgotten what pain feels like when it’s not coupled with Tozer’s warm parts, the press and fill of him. 

Hickey speaks of the water, of the deck against Tozer’s back, of the swell of wood and other things, the promise of warmth and a life lived on the shore, and Tozer growls at him to shut the fuck up, his fingers stretching Hickey’s mouth. Hickey bites down, his teeth and tongue and the bones of Tozer, and everything tastes like metal. 

Tozer says, rutting against Hickey, breathless, “One year, and then we’ll be free.”

Hickey spits Tozer’s hand out of his mouth, leads it back around, to the raised lines of his backside. Tozer’s nails are claws, digging deep and true, and it’s here, it’s this, love or something like it, Hickey and Tozer and the blood between them that rises, that spills over, them and this room and them, again, fucking over a lifeless body on the floor. 

Tozer says, “One year,” and Hickey cries out when Tozer spends inside him, tasting the cold inside of his mouth, and it’s only a year, but it’s a lifetime, Tozer’s fingers moving forward once more to touch Hickey, to bring him to fruition. Only one year, Tozer says, but Hickey knows that it will be the rest of his life. 

After all, Hickey’s never believed in happy endings.


End file.
